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My games played at Gencon
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Here's the games that I got to play at Gencon along with a description of our trip in general. We headed down to Indy on Monday evening and made it as far as Anderson. The next day, three of us swam at the hotel, then we went to a doctor's appointment. After that we hit a couple Tuesday Morning stores, the Boardroom, Great Harvest Bread store and Half Price Books (no games that I wanted and didn't have). Then we met my father, stepmom and sister at Arnie's for dinner, then hit Ritter's for custard on the way to my father's house (near Greencastle). That night, the kids went swimming while the adults visited. The next morning, the gaming started.
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Posted Wed Aug 16, 2006 6:50 pm
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1.
Board Game: Blokus
[Average Rating:7.26 Overall Rank:118]
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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We'd picked this one up at the Boardroom Games. Our family has always enjoyed Rumis, so we decided to pick this one up. Dad, my gamer kids and I played two games of this. Hanson wasn't so excited and only played the first game. It's not as big a hit as Rumis, but a decent game.
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2.
Board Game: Toppo
[Average Rating:6.11 Overall Rank:2674]
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Next Zandra and I taught this one to my dad. He played a couple hands and thought it was just ok. (This is the worst reaction that I've had to this game when teaching new players.) After that we had a cookout and then some more swimming before Lisa and I headed in to Indy.
We got to the Marriott and found Darrell was already there scouting parking spaces, but we went conventional and parked in the Marriott garage. Then we stopped by Tom Wham's room to finish putting auction tags on our stuff, then borrowed his dolly to check our stuff into the auction. Alan called while we were doing that and so we all went to Rock Bottom to take advantage of $2 pint night.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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The next morning, I showed up at the Rio Grande booth to help set up, only to discover that some of my fellow demo-ers had already taken care of it. So I got the five minute rules lesson on E&T the card game, Zigzag and caught part of the Oltre Mare explanation. After lunch time (which I skipped because of large dinner the night before), Darrell and Alan stopped by the booth and I went off duty to play this game of pirates carousing on spring break. We took turns leading the captain around the board to drink, make mayhem with the town guard, find treasure maps and, of course, quarrel over who got the best bed every night. Alan proved to be the most piratical.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Lisa had kindly stood in line for us to get tickets to the next event as well as Pokemon tickets for the kids. So we arrived early and Darrell, Alan and I played a three player game of this classic. It works pretty well, but I think we'll only subtract fifteen instead of twenty per expedition next time.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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We'd tried to get tickets for this one at Origins, but were not able to. Here we got to play. Darrell and I made Alan play at a different table because he'd been winning everything that day. Our strategy proved sound, but wasn't enough. He won on the other table getting a game and a T-shirt and a chance to play in the semi finals. Darrell and I got a game and had some fun. The one player at our table that had some experience moved last and won our table. The moving last part seemed huge and the judge admitted that a disproportionate number of wins were by the last person to play. Other than that, the game seems pretty clean as the players move their tribes across Pangea and try to control the most valuable areas as the supercontinent breaks apart. Every time 25 million years pass, another chunk floats out to sea. The time is measured by flipping a card at the end of each players turn. The cards range from ~3-20 million years and a few have no breakup instead of naming the departing continent. After the last piece has broken off, the winner is determined by counting VP's from controlled areas. The VP range from 1 to 6 points per space. I think our scores ranged from 26-17, but a few turns before the end, it was 18-22-23-23. Then we decided to go eat at Claddagh's Irish Pub.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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We suspected that Darrell had only recommended this restaurant because his car was parked near it, but when he said he'd drive us back, we agreed to go. (He had to move his car five times, but spent $9 total in parking for the weekend, using $3 lots Wed-Fri during the day and parking on the street at night and weekends.) The food and beer were good, but the place was really loud, even though we left before the Jameson girls arrived. We hit the chocolate shop on the circle on the way home and Lisa got Darrell some chocolate for his birthday, but I am not sure that she shared it with him.  When we returned to the hotel, we played BLC and Darrell proved to be the best builder of our bunch.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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I'd brought this one along to give it a try, but we all decided that Liar's Dice without the dice wasn't as much fun. It will probably be hitting the trade block before long.
We played a warmup game of Kleine Fische where Darrell proved to be the best fisherman, then Lisa called it a night, so we played Vegas Showdown three player and Darrell parlayed his fishing wins into the most successful casino.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Friday morning before the doors opened, Scott Tepper wanted a refresher on this one. What a great little game, we finished the game in under ten minutes without rushing, but still felt like we had made meaningful decisions. I got some revenge on the Pangea winner at our table by showing him how to lure patrons to my nightclub just after the doors opened. Then it was another busy morning of demo-ing. Lisa and Tom finished their auction duties for the morning, so we and Darrell walked over to meet my sister at an Indian place on Illinois for their excellent buffet while Alan played Silverton.
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9.
Board Game: Aton
[Average Rating:7.09 Overall Rank:277]
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Lisa and Tom had more auctioning to do after lunch, so Darrell and I went back to Rio Grande booth to try some more games. We played this one first and while I like it, I think Darrell's comment, "There's almost too much going on," has some merit. I am looking forward to trying it more, but think it will not be a teach and play game, but will require a few games before the different scoring methods become natural.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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None of the other games were open, so Darrell and I decided to tackle this one two player. Jay walked us through the rules and we gave it a shot. Darrell met his five life goals by the time I had two down. The gameplay could be fun with the right crowd, but I commented, "I am not sure I should play a game that I get embarassed when people come watch."
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Alan showed up at the booth, so we roped a fourth into joining us for a game of delivering mail in 18th century Germany. Darrell proved most adept at establishing a postal system. This is a game that makes me agree with the SdJ folks. It's accessible, quick, scales well from two to four players and is fairly easy to grasp for new players.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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We decided to try to win a game, so we headed over to GB7, but were an hour early. So we broke the shrink on this one. (I'd decided that I wouldn't buy a game that was being exclusively distributed, but when a friend's fishtank broke and he had to order some games from Funagain anyway, I broke down and ordered this one.) Last year at Gencon, I got to try this one as a prototype, so we got through the ruels quickly and started playing. We called it after five battles because we noticed that Lisa's hands kept getting better and better even though she was participating in all of the battles. Then we discovered that she wasn't discarding the cards that she used in the battles. Then I understood why the Dog cards confused her. 
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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A few minutes after the event was due to start, we tracked down a GB7 guy. He came over a few minutes later and told us that we couldn't play because the judges weren't there. By this time there were about twenty people waiting for the event and we finally convinced him that we wanted to try it, even if they couldn't give away the games. So he got us some copies and we split up and played. A few turns in the judge showed up, collected tickets, explained a few rules incorrectly and insisted that we use no bid markers to note which prices needed to be reduced. She finally found someone else to annoy and we all had a great time. None of our group won a board, but the winner of ours is also a member of ROBA, so I may see it occasionally. I arranged to purchase Alan's previously won copy, so all were happy.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Then we called Tom and got him to agree to meet at Champions for the Kleine Fische puffer championships. We arrived and were told we'd have to wait and none of the multitude of empty tables would be suitable because they weren't being served. There was one next to the bar that would have worked very well and we could have served ourselves, but they finally crammed us into a booth and the game commenced. We played standard rules with the championship addition that whenever a puffer fish is exposed, all must toast, "Puffer!" and take a drink. We had some issues with empty glass toasting because it seemed that our booth wasn't high on the servince priority list, but we did manage to get plenty to drink before the night was over. Rich Borg stopped by for a hand and proposed a variant octopus rule that we tried for the second game. I hope that we are able to continue this tradition, but we may have to find a new venue. Lisa is the KF champion until next year because she convincingly won both games while maintaining her share of beer evaporation.
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15.
Board Game: ZigZag
[Average Rating:5.89 Unranked]
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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My dad dropped off the kids on Saturday morning so that they could participate in the Pokemon pre-release tournament. So when they arrived Lisa brought them to the booth and I taught Lisa and the kids this cute little race game. No turns, players just build their routes by simultaneously turning over cards and/or claiming unwanted cards as they plot their path through the maze cards.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Quinn and Lisa decided to roam the hall, so I showed this one to Darrell, Zandra and Hanson along with an unsuspecting patron. Darrell wound up too far ahead for the others' fireballs to affect him and handily won the race. My sister brought Taco Bell around 1:30 and we broke for lunch and watched Lisa collect Star Wars dolls at the auction for a while, then my sister borrowed Lisa's badge to take a turn through the Exhibit Hall. Then Jill and I took the kids to the Pokemon area and got them set up.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Then I was off to the 17th annual Gencon Up Front tournament. Everybody gets three rounds of play cutting for scenario (between two listed), side and nationality. No one can have the same nationality twice. I won with the Germans against the Americans in Patrol, then lost as defending Russians against Japanese in Block Clearing. Then I fulfilled my auxiliary winning conditions by marching my Japanese to RC5 in Jungle Assualt without a casualty on either side against Larry Zoet.
This was good enough to get me to the semifinals, but I'd used my three favorite nationalities already.
I wandered over to see how the kids were doing and they were having a good time. They'd finished their games and were trading while Lisa (who got kicked out the auction for not having a badge [saving a decent chunk of change for me, I suspect  ]). Lisa, Jill and the kids were heading over to Buca di Beppos.
For the semi's I cut American attackers chasing the Germans in Rear Guard action and with lots of support from my mortar managed to catch them to advance to the finals. In the finals, I got to face Mark again (the winner of my the second game). The scenario was Outpost Line and I got the French. Fortunately, I cut defense and Mark got the Italians. So my nine Frenchmen with a MMG and mortar tried to hold off the 22 Italians and their AFV. At the end of the first deck, I'd lost two guys and permanently broken my mortar. Then early in second deck, he eliminated my MMG guy and crew. So I was one guy from breaking. The sarge retrieved the MMG, then sustained a wound. I managed to get the MMG to another guy and crew it with the wounded sarge and even shot up a few more Italians, but near the end of the deck, another Frenchman routed and Mark won the wood. This was Mark's first Gencon-Indy, but I hope that he makes it this way again from SoCal. He was a lot of fun to play!
My sister took the kids home Saturday night and Lisa, Darrell and I played Havoc (better when it's not almost midnight) and watched part of the Redneck Comedy Tour.
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18.
Board Game: Loot
[Average Rating:6.70 Unranked]
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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I didn't actually play this one, but it's name seems appropriate. I woke early Sunday and checked out of the auction. About half the stuff had sold, but it netted enough to pay for most of the hotel and food at the con. I hauled the remaining stuff back to the van and roamed the exhibit hall before it opened, picking up a "few" games from Playtime and Brian Yu's Voltage. His other one looked interesting, too, but the red/green flags made it impossible for me to try. Another pretty busy morning at the Rio Grande booth and then Lisa and I walked the hall one more time to check out the new Mayfair stuff and then we had some nachos at Champs before returning to the hall to pick up some Out of the Box tins and some Rio Grande games. Then we went to retriev the kids from my sister's in Carmel en route to Columbus.
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Scott Russell
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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We didn't play this one until Tuesday, but this was the reason we went to Columbus! We had intended to see the Star Wars exhibit after Origins, but COSI was closed July 3 and 4 for fireworks. So we went Monday. The exhibit was pretty good with lots of props and a few nice hands on exhibits. Unfortunately, the hands on stuff was showing it's age. We also got to see the basketball playing rats and watch some explosions, so it was a pretty good trip to COSI. Then we headed home and arrived ~10. It was a fun trip, but good to be home!
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Posted Wed Aug 16, 2006 1:51 am
